Richard J. McNerney died July
17, 2004 in Newport, Ore., at age 55 of Huntington’s
disease. He was born in Portland and graduated from
Franklin High School. He was a 1981 graduate of the
University of Oregon Law School. McNerney practiced
law in Hermiston and Newport. The former district attorney
of Morrow County also worked in the Lincoln County
District Attorney’s office in Newport.

He is survived by his mother, May Jane
Moon, three sisters and a brother.

• • • • •

Douglas Alan Swanson died on Oct.
19, 2004, the victim of a homicide. He was 51.

Swanson was born in Los Angeles on March
21, 1953. He grew up in the Chicago area and attended
the Laboratory Schools of the University of Chicago.
He graduated magna cum laude from the University of
New Mexico and obtained his J.D. degree from Lewis & Clark
Law School. He joined the Oregon bar in 1980.

Swanson was a founding member and principal
of the law firm of Swanson, Thomas and Coon in 1982.
While in law school, Michael Royce, Ray Thomas and
Swanson had a vision of starting a firm with a unique
focus on social justice. After graduating, they started
the law firm of Royce, Thomas & Swanson. Royce
later retired from the firm and former classmate Jim
Coon joined the partnership.

Swanson practiced workers’ compensation
law, representing workers who were injured or disabled
through their jobs. His firm is also noted for its
personal injury work on behalf of plaintiffs, winning
cases in the areas of product liability and tobacco
litigation.

Swanson had many interests and enthusiasms
beyond his law practice. He was a noted joke-teller.
Recently he was called into service to help a friend
who walked a marathon. His duty, which he carried out
with style and enthusiasm, was to walk with her during
the last hour and tell jokes and stories to keep her
spirits up through the final tiring miles.

Swanson was outgoing and friendly and
widely known throughout many of Portland’s communities,
including those of city and county employees, the legal
community, and the soccer world, in which he was a
player, coach, soccer dad and enthusiastic fan.

Swanson was active in charitable, humanitarian
and political work. He was on the board of a local
non-profit, Green Empowerment, which provides support
for renewable energy projects around the world. He
was on the board of the Brain Injury Association of
Oregon and did volunteer political and legal work for
Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, representing
Willamette Valley farmworkers.

He was a former president of Oregon Workers’ Compensation
Attorneys (OWCA). In 2001, he received the Douglas
W. Daughtry Professionalism Award from the OSB Workers’ Compensation
Section.

He is survived by his wife, Jane Ediger,
their two sons, a brother, a sister, and his father
and stepmother.

• • • • •

Deborah Dealy-Browning, 54, died
Oct. 31, 2004, after a long battle with alcoholism.
She was born in Florida and grew up in a variety of
locations, including Okinawa, Albuquerque, Denver and
Los Angeles, as her father was a career Air Force officer.
Dealy-Browning graduated from McMinnville High School
with honors, then attended Oregon State University
and graduated from Willamette Law School in 1981.

The former assistant U.S. attorney for
the District of Oregon (1989-1998) worked both in the
Eugene branch office and the main office in Portland.
In 1992 she served a six-month temporary detail to
the U.S. Sentencing Commission in Washington, D.C.
Previously she served as a deputy city attorney for
the City of Salem and spearheaded the Mid-Willamette
Valley Task Force as its first special assistant U.S.
attorney in 1988, prosecuting a wide variety of major
drug cases for the regional task force. As a federal
prosecutor, she quickly gained a reputation for toughness
and tenacity and became a favorite of federal agents,
especially from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms, for her commitment and dedication to their
firearms prosecutions. At the time of her death, Dealy-Browning
was in solo practice in North Portland.

Dealy-Browning had a soft side, too.
She loved animals (especially her cat Maybe), listened
to opera and was an accomplished knitter. She had a
deep love of learning and the law, and nothing was
too difficult or inconsequential for her. She is survived
by her mother, Joan Browning, two brothers and a sister.

In her honor, the Oregon Attorney Assistance
Program has established the Deborah Dealy-Browning
Scholarship Fund to help Oregon attorneys needing financial
assistance to obtain alcohol or other substance abuse
treatment. (See http://www.oaap.org.)

• • • • •

Doris Rodman Jewett, a former
public member of the Board of Bar Examiners, died Nov.
17, 2004, of cancer. She served on the board for four
years in the mid-1990s. She was 77.

Jewett was born Dec. 9, 1926 in Metolius
and raised in eastern Oregon and southern Idaho. Jewett
had a long career in social work career and psychology.
She earned an MSW degree in social work in 1957 from
the University of Washington and was associated over
the years with the Parry Center, the state hospital
and Portland State University. She had a private practice
in clinical social work for 25 years and maintained
a busy and varied professional life, which included
founding programs such as the Stepfamily Association
(Oregon chapter), supervising many clinicians and consulting
for the Children’s Psychiatric Unit at Cedar Hills
Hospital. Jewett was also an adjunct professor at Portland
State University.